Rant: Breaking up with Gentoo

Dear Gentoo,

We've been together for 10 years now and there's a couple of things I've really been meaning to say. When I first fell for you I was enticed by how you were so fast and lean and full of charm (you also had a bigger set of packages than any other distro out there). It wasn't all looks either, you had a willingness to try anything and, unlike LFS whom I had just dumped for being a slob, you knew how to keep our living space neat. It really made me feel special and I was convinced that nobody else had done the things we did together. Although we were relatively new to it we learned and got better together.

Then what happened? I mean, look at yourself! You're threatening to tear apart my desk and stick plasmoids all over my walls, you constantly whine about how outdated your profile is (even though changing it could be hazardous to your health), every little makeover is followed with an argument about all our life's decisions, and you're always making veiled threats to change our baselayout!

When did you get to be like this? Your friends have developed a bad attitude to even your most ardent fans and instead of listening to criticism and accepting patches they defend your inequities! My family can't stand to see you anymore and you're an embarrassment.

I'm also constantly babysitting and you can't even make a basic decision anymore without talking too much, making bizarre demands, becoming unstable. Why did I need to reinstall python to install docutils to install upgrade eselect to upgrade sandbox and portage to upgrade cairo to upgrade XULrunner? Why do we always have to fight this way? All I wanted was the latest version of firefox without you going crazy on me and having a complete mental breakdown. Is that too much to ask? Speaking of psycho have you made up your mind about whether to organize the cmputer according to python 2.6 or 2.4? While I'm on the topic of your crazy whims, you decided some time ago to install everything onto the new python 2.6 you made me get and now you want everything to go back to 2.4 again because you've flippantly changed your mind? This isn't like picking and choosing between links and lynx - decisions like this should not be made lightly since our package manager depends on this! Speaking of packages your selection is poor and although you think overlaying this makes up for it, I think it only makes you that much more unstable! I hope you see my point, you have fundamental dependency issues and you're always revdep-rebuilding all over the tree instead of just keeping things neat and organized from the get-go. I can't live like this anymore! I'm trying to build an online life and that can't be done on shifting sands.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: we're through! I know it's tacky to break up via "blog" posting, but it's the new millenium. I'm not being a coward, it's just how this is done these days.

It probably isn't the best time to tell you that I've been seeing something else. No, it isn't a former X like Mandrake, LFS, or Ubuntu, and it certainly isn't that narcissistic, slutty, trailer-trash byetch Windows.

It's PCLinuxOS. It's down to earth, not very needy, and has been respectful to my family and friends. Although it's not as open to new ideas, it knows you have to be assertive to keep a tidy dependency tree. I understand if you don't want to stay friends after this.

As soon as I can sell our computer PCLinuxOS and I will be getting a new quad-core computer together. I need you to find another drive to stay on so you can have your bytes cleared out of mine by the end of the month.